FF: What Things Are (Part 5)
Title: What Things Are
Author: Ellie
Rating: R (for adult themes)
Spoilers: Post-“Who’s Your Daddy?”
Notes: This is the final part of this. Thank you to everyone who's provided comments and concrit.
Previously:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
****
Part 5
****
Cuddy did her best to avoid House at the hospital the remainder of the week. After throwing herself at him, she had no desire to face him and his certain subtle reminders of her behavior. He cooperated surprisingly well with this, showing up to the Clinic with something approaching regularity while generally avoiding everyone.
At the end of the week, she wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone what she’d accomplished at work, but the hospital was still standing. If it was running slightly less efficiently than usual, no one had noticed. Life rattled on.
She just felt rattled. A seism had shaken the guiding principles of her life, and she wasn’t sure how to reassemble the broken pieces. Or if she even wanted to.
As was so often the case, House had been right. She needed to decide what she wanted before she decided how to reconstruct her life.
Returning home from work, she shed the protection of her Tahari suit and Louboutin heels, and slipped into frayed Levis and a cable knit sweater. With a goblet of red wine, she curled up in her favorite chair, and allowed the maelstrom of suppressed emotions to whirl freely through her mind.
She was good at her job. She loved her job. There were things she would have done differently, given a second chance, but her career path was not something she could regret. Too much good had been done for too many for her to truly second-guess the decision.
The pinot noir was smoky and fruity, and she could feel it relaxing her as it made its way into her veins.
She’d always wanted a relationship more than children. Waking up next to someone was preferable to being woken, readying kids, prioritizing their lives and yours. Finding that someone to wake up next to was more difficult than it seemed. She’d been too busy during school for anything more than fun, and too busy during residency for anything at all. By then, many of her undergraduate friends were already marrying and starting families, and she was just starting her career and thinking of dating seriously. A decade later, she had a fabulous career and a nonexistent love life.
It had seemed easier to just skip ahead to the next step, the way she’d skipped second grade, and just have a child. Except the process had only made her realize how much she’d wanted the other, the way House had interfered and touched her and smiled when she’d told him she was pregnant.
Sitting the empty wineglass on the side table, she studied the tiny glimmer of cerise at the base of the cup. It was the color of blood, glowing in the soft light of the room.
Her blood had washed away all her efforts. She was back to square one, with no relationship and no child. But there was still something to what she’d felt with House. Despite her embarrassment at his departure Monday night, she’d meant what she said.
At that moment, it had seemed impossible to believe what he said, that he wanted her too. What man would walk away from that? Half a second later, she loved him more for walking away.
They’d known each other long enough for her to know every reason that it was a bad idea, predestined to end badly. Yet she knew, too, every reason it could work. The late night of pizza and beer and a snowball fight when he was supposed to be helping her write up organic lab results. That one night of drunken, amazing sex the night before her graduation. The way he knew just what to say to make her laugh, even when she didn’t want to. The way he watched her when she wasn’t watching him. The way he’d walked away.
Would he walk away, if she appeared on his doorstep tonight? She mulled the idea over, weighing the decision. There was no doubt he wanted her, but she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t turn her away again.
With resolution fueled by bravado and Burgundy, she found her keys and her loafers, and headed out the door.
It took some luck to find a parking space near his place. Walking up the block, she stopped by his cracked window, listening to the piano music escaping, jangling and syncopated. She didn’t recognize it, but wondered that there wasn’t a crowd gathered, listening. No one else, except Wilson, would appreciate the melody flowing out, House at his most expressive.
The music came to an abrupt halt when she knocked on the door. It seemed an eternity before he door opened, so long that she wondered if he was going to ignore the intrusion. But suddenly, there he was, peering out at her.
“Cuddy.” He sounded suspicious, and was slow to open the door wider. It did open, though, inviting her in to the apartment.
She heard the door closing behind her, and pirouetted to face him. Without giving herself time to think, her arms were around him, and she felt him totter off-balance, forcing him to return her embrace.
“Cuddy?” he asked, after a moment, arms slackening, hands coming to rest on her shoulders.
“Will you do this now?” She looked up at him, expecting surprise.
Instead, he looked away, grabbing his cane from where it rested beside the door and made his way to the couch. His limp was more pronounced than usual, and she wondered if her own affairs had prevented her from noticing him this week. He still didn’t answer when she joined him on the couch, at the end farthest from him, a buffer of nothingness between them.
Rather than looking at him, her gaze swept the apartment. Only then did she notice the bottle of Johnnie Walker and the open prescription bottle on top of the piano, and reevaluated everything from the moment she’d heard his piano playing. Looking at him again, she observed the hand, lightly on the thigh, the tension in his face. She slid closer to him, halfway across the couch, and touched his shoulder.
When he looked at her, she could see the pain, old, familiar, warring with his desire. She asked, “How is it?”
“Worse than usual.”
“This has been going on for a while.” It wasn’t a question, and she wasn’t expecting much of a response from him. This wasn’t something he discussed.
House looked away and nodded. “It’s been getting worse the last couple of months. There have been a few really bad days, and today was one of them.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” She felt foolish even asking; she thought she knew the answer.
“You were preoccupied. Then happy. Then grieving.” That hadn’t been what she expected to hear from him. “I’ve dealt with this long enough that no one else needed to be bothered.”
Cuddy’s spine stiffened and she pulled away from him. “Do you want me to go?”
“No.” His hand was suddenly around her wrist, caressing the skin where it disappeared under soft lambswool. “You understand what you’re in for, staying?”
“I’ve known you a long time, House.”
“Okay, then.” He tugged her towards him and she came, pliant and warm against his tense form.
“How much have you had?”
“Since I got home? Five or six Vicodin. How much whisky’s left in the bottle?”
“Very little.”
“Then too much.”
She rose from the couch and offered him her hand. “C’mon. We could both use a good night’s sleep.”
The weight of him as he used her hand to pull himself off the couch surprised her. He was so lean, she often forgot how much there was to him.
One hand on her, one hand on his cane, he followed her back to his bedroom, flicking off lights as they went. “You realize I’ll probably just keep you awake, and not in the way I’d prefer.” He gave her a half-hearted leer from the doorway.
“I’ve got my ways.” She grinned and was rewarded with a much more sincere leer. “Do you have a t-shirt I could borrow?”
“Second drawer. Tell me more about these ways of yours.”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she said, pulling a plain gray t-shirt from the drawer. “Now get undressed and get to bed.”
“I don’t need to hear that twice.”
She heard clothes falling to the floor as she closed his bathroom door behind her, and knew they’d be left, piled by the side of the bed. When she emerged, she smiled at the pile of clothes, exactly where she expected them to be, then looked up to see House in bed, frowning.
“That shirt is far too big for you.”
“That would be the point.” She switched off the light before climbing onto the opposite side of the bed. But rather than slipping under the covers, she slipped them down. “Scoot towards me.”
He did, hesitating only a moment, then going very still as she moved across him to rest beside his exposed right leg. When she touched it, just above his knee, he flinched away instinctively, but he didn’t move to stop her.
She knew he’d used a masseuse to work out some of his leg pain, but she doubted anyone had touched the bare flesh. Even in exams, he’d been reluctant, almost embarrassed about it. Yet now he allowed her, gentle and tentative at first, then with increasing pressure, her sure fingers stroking their way down the lines of muscle. Kneading the line where the sartorius crossed the vastus medialis drew a groan from him, and her hands stilled, fingers relaxed to rest lightly on the skin.
“No, keep going, Miss Magic Fingers.”
He said nothing else as she worked the tense, tangled muscles of his thigh, slowly tracing and separating, terminology memorized since high school floating up to match each line of her fingers. When he was breathing measured and deep, she shifted and settled to his left. His hand caught hers, fingers twining and thumb massaging her palm, warm against her metacarpals. Placing it on the worn cotton of his shirt, he covered it with his.
“You understand what you’re asking,” he said contemplatively, “and what this is going to be.”
“I wouldn’t have stayed if I didn’t.”
“Even if it’s more like the last week than anything else?”
She knew only the darkness, combined with too much pain and alcohol, left his tongue loose enough to even discuss this. Even without such mitigating factors, she owed him just as much truth. “You made the last week bearable. Life isn’t perfect, and certainly neither of us are.”
Nodding, his chin brushed her hair. “And can I presume that those hands are just as talented when put to other uses?”
With a smile and feigned innocence, she said, “Oh, very. I can paint and knit and play the clarinet.”
“Such ladylike accomplishments. You could almost catch a hero from Jane Austen with those.”
“You’re hardly Mr. Darcy. More like something out of a Brontë novel.”
He laughed quietly. “The clarinet? That certainly has great potential.”
“Interested in a duet sometime?”
“Very.”
His arm wrapped around and pulled her close. She rested her cheek on his bicep, feeling the steady rhythm of his breathing under her hand. This was far from where she’d envisioned herself ending up, but it was where she felt right.
Together, they slept.
****
End
****
Author: Ellie
Rating: R (for adult themes)
Spoilers: Post-“Who’s Your Daddy?”
Notes: This is the final part of this. Thank you to everyone who's provided comments and concrit.
Previously:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
****
Part 5
****
Cuddy did her best to avoid House at the hospital the remainder of the week. After throwing herself at him, she had no desire to face him and his certain subtle reminders of her behavior. He cooperated surprisingly well with this, showing up to the Clinic with something approaching regularity while generally avoiding everyone.
At the end of the week, she wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone what she’d accomplished at work, but the hospital was still standing. If it was running slightly less efficiently than usual, no one had noticed. Life rattled on.
She just felt rattled. A seism had shaken the guiding principles of her life, and she wasn’t sure how to reassemble the broken pieces. Or if she even wanted to.
As was so often the case, House had been right. She needed to decide what she wanted before she decided how to reconstruct her life.
Returning home from work, she shed the protection of her Tahari suit and Louboutin heels, and slipped into frayed Levis and a cable knit sweater. With a goblet of red wine, she curled up in her favorite chair, and allowed the maelstrom of suppressed emotions to whirl freely through her mind.
She was good at her job. She loved her job. There were things she would have done differently, given a second chance, but her career path was not something she could regret. Too much good had been done for too many for her to truly second-guess the decision.
The pinot noir was smoky and fruity, and she could feel it relaxing her as it made its way into her veins.
She’d always wanted a relationship more than children. Waking up next to someone was preferable to being woken, readying kids, prioritizing their lives and yours. Finding that someone to wake up next to was more difficult than it seemed. She’d been too busy during school for anything more than fun, and too busy during residency for anything at all. By then, many of her undergraduate friends were already marrying and starting families, and she was just starting her career and thinking of dating seriously. A decade later, she had a fabulous career and a nonexistent love life.
It had seemed easier to just skip ahead to the next step, the way she’d skipped second grade, and just have a child. Except the process had only made her realize how much she’d wanted the other, the way House had interfered and touched her and smiled when she’d told him she was pregnant.
Sitting the empty wineglass on the side table, she studied the tiny glimmer of cerise at the base of the cup. It was the color of blood, glowing in the soft light of the room.
Her blood had washed away all her efforts. She was back to square one, with no relationship and no child. But there was still something to what she’d felt with House. Despite her embarrassment at his departure Monday night, she’d meant what she said.
At that moment, it had seemed impossible to believe what he said, that he wanted her too. What man would walk away from that? Half a second later, she loved him more for walking away.
They’d known each other long enough for her to know every reason that it was a bad idea, predestined to end badly. Yet she knew, too, every reason it could work. The late night of pizza and beer and a snowball fight when he was supposed to be helping her write up organic lab results. That one night of drunken, amazing sex the night before her graduation. The way he knew just what to say to make her laugh, even when she didn’t want to. The way he watched her when she wasn’t watching him. The way he’d walked away.
Would he walk away, if she appeared on his doorstep tonight? She mulled the idea over, weighing the decision. There was no doubt he wanted her, but she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t turn her away again.
With resolution fueled by bravado and Burgundy, she found her keys and her loafers, and headed out the door.
It took some luck to find a parking space near his place. Walking up the block, she stopped by his cracked window, listening to the piano music escaping, jangling and syncopated. She didn’t recognize it, but wondered that there wasn’t a crowd gathered, listening. No one else, except Wilson, would appreciate the melody flowing out, House at his most expressive.
The music came to an abrupt halt when she knocked on the door. It seemed an eternity before he door opened, so long that she wondered if he was going to ignore the intrusion. But suddenly, there he was, peering out at her.
“Cuddy.” He sounded suspicious, and was slow to open the door wider. It did open, though, inviting her in to the apartment.
She heard the door closing behind her, and pirouetted to face him. Without giving herself time to think, her arms were around him, and she felt him totter off-balance, forcing him to return her embrace.
“Cuddy?” he asked, after a moment, arms slackening, hands coming to rest on her shoulders.
“Will you do this now?” She looked up at him, expecting surprise.
Instead, he looked away, grabbing his cane from where it rested beside the door and made his way to the couch. His limp was more pronounced than usual, and she wondered if her own affairs had prevented her from noticing him this week. He still didn’t answer when she joined him on the couch, at the end farthest from him, a buffer of nothingness between them.
Rather than looking at him, her gaze swept the apartment. Only then did she notice the bottle of Johnnie Walker and the open prescription bottle on top of the piano, and reevaluated everything from the moment she’d heard his piano playing. Looking at him again, she observed the hand, lightly on the thigh, the tension in his face. She slid closer to him, halfway across the couch, and touched his shoulder.
When he looked at her, she could see the pain, old, familiar, warring with his desire. She asked, “How is it?”
“Worse than usual.”
“This has been going on for a while.” It wasn’t a question, and she wasn’t expecting much of a response from him. This wasn’t something he discussed.
House looked away and nodded. “It’s been getting worse the last couple of months. There have been a few really bad days, and today was one of them.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” She felt foolish even asking; she thought she knew the answer.
“You were preoccupied. Then happy. Then grieving.” That hadn’t been what she expected to hear from him. “I’ve dealt with this long enough that no one else needed to be bothered.”
Cuddy’s spine stiffened and she pulled away from him. “Do you want me to go?”
“No.” His hand was suddenly around her wrist, caressing the skin where it disappeared under soft lambswool. “You understand what you’re in for, staying?”
“I’ve known you a long time, House.”
“Okay, then.” He tugged her towards him and she came, pliant and warm against his tense form.
“How much have you had?”
“Since I got home? Five or six Vicodin. How much whisky’s left in the bottle?”
“Very little.”
“Then too much.”
She rose from the couch and offered him her hand. “C’mon. We could both use a good night’s sleep.”
The weight of him as he used her hand to pull himself off the couch surprised her. He was so lean, she often forgot how much there was to him.
One hand on her, one hand on his cane, he followed her back to his bedroom, flicking off lights as they went. “You realize I’ll probably just keep you awake, and not in the way I’d prefer.” He gave her a half-hearted leer from the doorway.
“I’ve got my ways.” She grinned and was rewarded with a much more sincere leer. “Do you have a t-shirt I could borrow?”
“Second drawer. Tell me more about these ways of yours.”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she said, pulling a plain gray t-shirt from the drawer. “Now get undressed and get to bed.”
“I don’t need to hear that twice.”
She heard clothes falling to the floor as she closed his bathroom door behind her, and knew they’d be left, piled by the side of the bed. When she emerged, she smiled at the pile of clothes, exactly where she expected them to be, then looked up to see House in bed, frowning.
“That shirt is far too big for you.”
“That would be the point.” She switched off the light before climbing onto the opposite side of the bed. But rather than slipping under the covers, she slipped them down. “Scoot towards me.”
He did, hesitating only a moment, then going very still as she moved across him to rest beside his exposed right leg. When she touched it, just above his knee, he flinched away instinctively, but he didn’t move to stop her.
She knew he’d used a masseuse to work out some of his leg pain, but she doubted anyone had touched the bare flesh. Even in exams, he’d been reluctant, almost embarrassed about it. Yet now he allowed her, gentle and tentative at first, then with increasing pressure, her sure fingers stroking their way down the lines of muscle. Kneading the line where the sartorius crossed the vastus medialis drew a groan from him, and her hands stilled, fingers relaxed to rest lightly on the skin.
“No, keep going, Miss Magic Fingers.”
He said nothing else as she worked the tense, tangled muscles of his thigh, slowly tracing and separating, terminology memorized since high school floating up to match each line of her fingers. When he was breathing measured and deep, she shifted and settled to his left. His hand caught hers, fingers twining and thumb massaging her palm, warm against her metacarpals. Placing it on the worn cotton of his shirt, he covered it with his.
“You understand what you’re asking,” he said contemplatively, “and what this is going to be.”
“I wouldn’t have stayed if I didn’t.”
“Even if it’s more like the last week than anything else?”
She knew only the darkness, combined with too much pain and alcohol, left his tongue loose enough to even discuss this. Even without such mitigating factors, she owed him just as much truth. “You made the last week bearable. Life isn’t perfect, and certainly neither of us are.”
Nodding, his chin brushed her hair. “And can I presume that those hands are just as talented when put to other uses?”
With a smile and feigned innocence, she said, “Oh, very. I can paint and knit and play the clarinet.”
“Such ladylike accomplishments. You could almost catch a hero from Jane Austen with those.”
“You’re hardly Mr. Darcy. More like something out of a Brontë novel.”
He laughed quietly. “The clarinet? That certainly has great potential.”
“Interested in a duet sometime?”
“Very.”
His arm wrapped around and pulled her close. She rested her cheek on his bicep, feeling the steady rhythm of his breathing under her hand. This was far from where she’d envisioned herself ending up, but it was where she felt right.
Together, they slept.
****
End
****